Parenting

Notes

Autonomy

There's a psychological experiment that I found very useful in thinking about this.

They had two kittens in a sort of carousel harness. One kitten was on the ground, and controlled where it could go, while the other kitten saw all the same things but had no control.

So they both had the same set of "stimuli", but one was in control and the other was just a passive observer.

And they found that as they matured, the passive kitten's cognitive development got significantly behind the active kitten's.

My takeaway: you have to let kids make choices or they won't learn how to. Kids have to have some autonomy growing up, or they won't ever have it. (edited)

The Horse-Rental Story

by Harena

when i was a teenager, i totally got into horseback riding (i'd still do it these days if my body weren't so borken ;p) and one my best friends & I were taking lessons at the same time and used to drag me to the stables to do one hour riding rentals
and in the course of that, i learned a bit about how to saddle & bridle & groom horses afterwards and really became fond of a particular horse
the stables we rode at had a plan where for x amount of $ you could lease a horse for a month and be the sole caretaker.. which included taking care of their feed, mucking the stall, exercising and grooming
which my friend thought we should try out, so i went to my mom and asked if she would pay for this (and give me rides to the stables 'cause i was, what? 15 or 16?) and this is what she said to me:
I will allow you to do this once you have proven that you are responsible enough
andyar, how the feck was i supposed to prove i was responsible enough without actually doing it???
this pretty much dampened me away from riding & then Highland happened and blah blah blah
fast forward a few decades and in a conversation my sister, she was heard to utter "I don't know why Sandy lost interest in horseback riding" oslt :P